Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Not Mary, the timid bride of that afternoon, was in our thoughts as we sat in shared silence on the lawn while more and more stars became visible. Not Mary, but Emma! There are women who love to the utmost. They do not care what the son or the brother or the husband is or does. For them he has only perfection and yet what they ask is that they may help to cover his imperfection — with glory if they can — and that at any cost they shall help to make him happy. Edgar didn’t need to say he knew this of Emma. What he did say as he rose to leave me after that half-hour of reverie was only, ‘Well — more power to her!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  AT STONEHAVEN THAT summer the Blues’ cottage was not opened; it bore a ‘To Let’ sign on a shaggier and shaggier lawn throughout the season. Nor was the atrocious mansion of the late Mrs. Stelling inhabited, except by a caretaker. Mr. Stelling had been encouraged to stroll among British philatelists while Sylvia motored in the Canadian Rockies with Janey Blue and George Prettiman. Mr and Mrs. Blue, it was understood, had hoped to add the rental fee of their cottage to the necessary expenses of a metropolitan wedding; but Stonehaven had an ‘off season’ and they were disappointed.

  ‘They won’t need it, though’, Irvie said at lunch on the last day of our sojourn at the Inn that year. ‘How long since you heard from Janey, Emma?’

  ‘Not since July, though I’ve written her twice since then.’

  ‘Coming to a head’, he said, surer than ever that he was a prophet. ‘The Blues’ll never be put to that outlay.’

  ‘What outlay?’ Will Pease asked his son; but, when Irvie explained, Will only laughed. ‘I’m afraid you’re at the age when it seems proper to be cynical about “girls”. I suppose it’s a Senior’s privilege. I can’t imagine even that peculiar Miss Stelling’s doing such a thing to a nice girl like Janey Blue, nor young Prettiman’s letting it be done, Irvie.’

  ‘I can’, Evelyn said with the slight frown that appeared upon her pretty brow whenever Sylvia Stelling was mentioned. ‘The “Stelling girl” wouldn’t have any compunction about taking anything on earth she wants, no matter from whom she takes it. She’s going to spend the rest of her life making up to herself for her mother’s treatment of her, and in that sulky ways of hers “the world is mine” is written all over her. As for George Prettiman, heaven help him, didn’t you ever notice that weak laugh of his? All he has for both mental and emotional equipment is a kind of sleepy good nature. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Irvie’s right and the Stelling girl’s decided that what she wants in a husband is beauty — mere somewhat masculine beauty.’

  ‘Yay, Mother!’ Irvie cried. ‘Isn’t that a bit indelicate? Aren’t you turning a trifle too modern for our old-fashioned midland background?’

  Evelyn gave him the flattered glance she always had for him when he teased her. ‘What do you think of it, Emma?’ she asked. ‘Is Irvie right?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems odd, though, Sylvia’s taking them on this elaborate trip — I mean Janey’s consenting to it. I — I’m afraid I’m sorry for Janey.’

  We were all sorry for Janey when we next heard of her — except Irvie perhaps, who seemed to take the affair as more or less a joke on all parties concerned; so his mother reported after a letter of his from Princeton. Emma wrote Harriet from Bryn Mawr she’d heard at last from Janey who’d left Sylvia’s motoring party at Banff in October and was on her way home. She’d written on the train. Emma quoted the four stiff sentences of which Janey’s letter to her consisted: ‘You are one of the few friends I feel I should notify that my plans for the future are completely altered. My engagement to George Prettiman is broken. I have no blame for anyone but myself in accepting so much hospitality. I am leaving for home at once.’

  Emma’s written comment was as emotional as if she’d spoken it. ‘Oh, Mother, Mother! That poor girl’s heart is broken. She’s never looked at anybody except George and her feeling for him was a blind devotion— ‘the very blindest I ever knew because of course the rest of us all saw what an absolute sap he is; but she never could — just blind, blind, blind! He couldn’t help being one, himself, of course, because such entire poverty of intellectual endowment simply can’t be improved; but Sylvia doesn’t care anything about that. She just wants another ornament like the new pearls she wore at Mary’s wedding. So she grabbed the handsomest man in the world — if you like that style — and what did she care if it broke poor Janey’s blind heart? Poor, poor blind Janey, she’ll never see George as he really was — she’ll only mourn his loss the rest of her days. Irvie saw it all coming long before the rest of us could even imagine it. How brilliant and shrewd he is, Mother! I think it was almost supernatural.’

  Irvie’s foresight amazed even his fond father. ‘You may not see how it applies’, Will said to me; ‘but such insight into the weaknesses of human character, the knowing what results it will bring about when nobody else does, is one of the requisites for becoming a great lawyer.’

  In fact, Irvie’s shrewdness in this sad matter seemed established; but there may have been a step in his reasoning that didn’t appear on the surface. He may have felt that almost anybody, even someone with a character far stronger than George Prettiman’s, mightn’t be able to resist Sylvia Stelling’s prodigious affluence, were it offered to him. Irvie may have thought that nobody could.

  Sylvia led her captive down into California where they were married with a costly splendour reported, with photographs, even in our local papers; but our own neighbourhood hopefully looked upon the incident as closed. ‘She’ll never come back to Stonehaven; it’ll be too small a field for her’, Evelyn said. ‘The pine trees’ll grow tall enough to hide that absurd palace and we can forget it and her too. We have better things to think about, thank heaven!’

  Her particular allusion — the better things to think about — was to the Princeton Commencement of that year. Irvie’s graduation, accompanied by Edgar’s, was for all the Peases a milestone decorated in carnival colours or at least in those that harmonized with orange and black, and even old Janet Pease, Irvie’s great-aunt, went to New Jersey for the celebration. My own occasion to be there was the reunion of my depleted class; but for Emma and Harriet there was a forlorn disappointment. My sister and I drove out to Bryn Mawr to pick up Emma and found her in despair, having been diagnosed in that very hour as afflicted by a severe attack of measles. Harriet stayed with her and I went on to my reunion alone.

  Will Pease didn’t let me spend much time among my classmates. He immediately seized upon me, carried me off to a ‘Tea’ in Irvie’s (and Edgar’s) handsome rooms, which were crowded with Peases and nice-looking girls and dressed-up students. In a window-seat I had an agreeable talk with a member of the graduating class whose name I didn’t catch, a frank young gentleman who seemed to be a special friend of Edgar Semple’s.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know old Edgar picked up a cum laude’, he said, laughing. ‘None of these people seem to notice it much, they’re all making such a fuss over Irvie Pease. Of course Irvie’s done well enough, too; but maybe he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t roomed with Edgar. He’s a popular guy, Irvie, though — got his P on the eleven this year; just barely, but he got it — and’s been on almost all the dance committees. He was our class president in Freshman year. Oh, yes, he’s quite a lad. I hear his graduation thesis has made something of a stir among the Faculty. I have an idea who it was that did most of the groundwork for him, though.’

  ‘Your friend Mr. Semple?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, well’, he said with a somewhat belated air of reticence. ‘Of course Irvie’d never have had the patience.’

  I made an enquiry about this thesis that evening at my own class headquarters. Dr. Philippus Connors was a relic my class had deposited in the Faculty in the Department of English, and now, though about to retire, he still showed sprightly signs of life and he was enthusiastic about Irving Pease’s thesis, an astonishing work of research and most excellently written, old Philippus said: ‘The title didn’
t allure me, “On Some of the More Obscure of the Elizabethan Writers”. We get a lot of that, you know, and most of it’s flashy stuff, shallow research, just decorated; but when I got into this — Lord, what a difference.’

  ‘Surprised you, did it, Philippus?’

  ‘Didn’t it, though!’ His worn-out eyes almost sparkled. ‘I hadn’t been expecting anything like it from Pease; I saw I’d under-rated him. That youth had been excavating. He’d dug up passages of genuine poetry by Elizabethans, some of ’em little more than names to many pretty good scholars. He’d found things that ought to live. In fact, that thesis is a revelation and we’re going to place it in the University Library as a reference work of lasting merit.’

  More light on that ‘work of lasting merit’, and upon other matters, was shed by the Class Day exercises. Will Pease insisted upon my membership in the ‘family’ for this cheerful ceremonial, and, as I sat in the temporary amphitheatre centred upon the half-buried historic cannon, it was easy to feel that among all those Seniors seated below us, the Peases saw only one. For them of course everything was all about Irvie, and, when one or another of the jocular class orators mentioned his name, Will and Evelyn leaned forward breathless as if they’d never heard it before.

  Most of the allusions to members of the class were providentially enigmatic to their families, and, when Will heard his son addressed from the rostrum as ‘Irvie Pease, King of the New York Night Spots’, and the class cheered jocosely, Will laughed heartily, too. ‘What good fun,’ he said, ‘to hear them making a joke of everything for the last time! They’ll all be out in the “wide, wide world” tomorrow and it won’t be so easy. Did you see how Irvie laughed, too, when he was called the “King of the New York Night Spots”? He told me he was expecting some such reference because a head waiter once mistook him for somebody else and gave him the best table at a floor show or something and some of his classmates saw him there. He said it was the only time he’d ever been in the place. It’s all great fun!’

  In the whole course of the afternoon Edgar Semple’s name was spoken only once; but it was received with a knowing acclaim from the class below us. The Class Prophet was merely naming over a group of Seniors for whom because of their studiousness he prophesied a gloomy fate in monastic seclusions; but when he came to Edgar he paused a moment and said, ‘Also in this category I see before me that Man Friday, good old Svengali Semple.’ The speaker’s pause to let his meaning sink in was rewarded by the Seniors’ mirthful manifestation that they understood him perfectly, though nobody else did. Will Pease turned beaming to me.

  ‘They certainly seem to appreciate having Edgar called Svengali. Some funny episode in his past four years, I suppose. I must ask him about it.’

  Will forgot to do so, however. On the way from the cannon exercises we ran into Philippus Connors who with fervour congratulated him on Irvie’s thesis. Of course Will already knew something about it; but what he heard from Philippus almost burst him. ‘“To be placed permanently in the University Library”!’ he repeated at intervals after our happy encounter with Philippus. ‘Permanently! “A work of exceptional merit.” Permanently! and that’s what the Faculty itself think of him. How could these four years end better? All these Commencement parents are proud, of course, and I mustn’t brag; but oh, I tell you, that boy of mine!’

  .. Wandering alone upon the campus after sunset, as older alumni sometimes wistfully do, I came beneath the windows of the rooms occupied by Irvie Pease and Edgar Semple. The windows were lighted; I saw Edgar passing and re-passing them, and, upon an impulse, went upstairs and found him alone, packing for departure.

  What’s the idea?’ I asked him. ‘Isn’t your class assembled over in front of Old North to sing on the steps for the last time, or maybe the next to the last time? Why aren’t you with them?’

  ‘Well, somebody’s got to do this’, he said. He alluded to the packing-boxes in which he was neatly placing accumulated books.

  ‘Then I won’t interrupt you.’

  ‘Why, no. That’s what I—’ He paused; then asked me, ‘Didn’t you get a note I left for you at the Nassau Club this morning?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been there to-day, Edgar.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, sir, since you’re here. It was just to ask you if you could spare a few minutes for a — for a confidential talk with me at any time before you’d be leaving. If you have the few minutes now it would be as good a time as any.’

  ‘Yes.’ I sat down. ‘What is it, Edgar?’

  ‘It’s — it’s a little difficult.’

  He stood before me, pondering, and I was almost humorously struck by the thought that in his essentials he’d changed little since his earlier boyhood. Naturally he was larger all over; but he would always be short and sturdy. He had developed a handsome profile if one noticed it; but he was still round-faced and still had what seemed to me the ‘bluest eyes in the world’. Except for them he’d have seemed stolid, yet they never flashed; they had always, even when he was presumably merry, the same look of comprehending things maturely. No, Edgar hadn’t changed much; he’d always been mature.

  ‘Can I help you out with it?’ I suggested. ‘There’s something you’d like me to do?’

  ‘Yes, if you could; but it’s a good deal’, he said, and his embarrassment continued. ‘I was wondering how good a financial risk you’d think I am. I’m pretty sure I could pay you back before long if you’d take my note for eighteen hundred dollars; but the matter’s rather involved. You see, Irvie and I — well, we’ve gotten into debt.’

  ‘You and Irvie have?’ I asked. ‘The two of you owe eighteen hundred dollars?’

  ‘It amounts to that’, he said. ‘The worst of it is Uncle Will’s already sent us enough to clean everything up and he thinks it’s all paid. I know he’s been saving up to send us through Harvard Law School and I think it would embarrass him a good deal to let us have that much extra at this time. I wouldn’t like to tell him that we need it, especially as he thinks all our bills have been settled.’

  ‘No, I’d not like to fell him that, either, Edgar.’

  ‘If I could borrow the eighteen hundred from you,’ Edgar said, ‘I could pay it back out of some money my father left me. I think it amounts to about seven thousand dollars; but the trouble is Uncle Will’s always kept it invested for me. If I asked him for it right now when it’s needed, or for eighteen hundred dollars of it, I’m afraid he might guess we hadn’t settled our debts with the money he’s already sent to do it with; but if I tell him later that I insist on paying my own expenses through the law school with the money my father left me, I think he’d be willing to let me have it and then I could pay you the eighteen hundred. Could you possibly let us have it, sir?’

  ‘“Us”?’ I said. ‘You mean “us”, do you, Edgar? You couldn’t possibly be referring to expenses incurred by Irvie Pease, “the King of the New York Night Spots”? You’re not being exclusively a Man Friday just now, are you?’

  The pink tint that spread over his face was undeniable. ‘Well, you see Irvie and I have always shared everything, sir.’

  ‘Which includes not only a Svengali thesis for the University Library but also such misfortunes as debts’, I said, and produced a cheque-book.

  Chapter Seventeen

  EDGAR REPAID ME at Stonehaven in August after Will’s arrival there. ‘He’s a really admirable boy, that Edgar’, Will said, not completely aware how truly he spoke. ‘It wasn’t really much more expensive to send the two of them through college than it would have been for the one; but now he’s turned independent and’s insisted that he can get through the four years of the Harvard Law School on some money his father left him and doesn’t intend to be any further expense to me ever. Of course, I told him I had never regarded him as a burden and that I’d looked upon it as a pleasure and a privilege to do what I could for him. He said that knowing this had been the greatest happiness in his life; but he knew that the times were slack and things growing more and
more expensive and he wouldn’t feel right with himself unless I let him have his way. Well, I had to, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, since he put it like that.’

  ‘He did,’ Will said, ‘and pretty strongly, too. I had to respect his reasons. He’s always been sound as a dollar and I’m proud of both of our boys. Another thing, too’, Will finished brightly. ‘This may come in handy for Irvie. I’ll probably be able to increase his allowance a little.’ its I hadn’t much doubt that Irvie could use an increase nor that now Edgar had his own money he would become Irvie’s banker as long as it lasted. This devoted ant, while his stores sufficed, would never refuse the grasshopper. The mainspring of Edgar’s young life was his gratitude for what Will and Evelyn had done for him and to repay it in some measure. He would always work to grant them their dearest wish, which was for the special kind of ‘success’ they wanted for Irvie.

  If Irvie didn’t have it Edgar wanted him to appear to them to have it. He’d ‘cover up’ for him; he’d go to any pains required to bring Irvie the distinctions that rejoiced them. More, his affection for Irvie himself was of such indulgence that it was a little like Emma’s own. Their two devotions to the one object were complete.

  What inspires the passionate friendships of youth is often a mystery to older people. Parents, and even uncles, see the children apparently wasting treasures of love and admiration in what’s obviously, sometimes even ludicrously, a wrong direction; even tactful opposition brings only a fire of championage. There were these two boys, Irvie and Edgar, and Emma Millerwood knew them. Anybody with a good mind would have said she couldn’t hesitate a moment between them, and she had a good mind; but she’d unhesitatingly chosen Irvie as the inspiration of her young life — and so had Edgar chosen Irvie as the basic motive for all his actions. Irvie had the something that so inspired them, and between them, and with all the Peases back of them, they’d have their chance to make of him a happy and successful man.